


A Brief History in Explosions

by miranda_wave (miranda_askher)



Series: Brief Histories [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Ambiguous major character death, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 19:25:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miranda_askher/pseuds/miranda_wave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ace's life: a line of fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brief History in Explosions

**Author's Note:**

> Caution: Not-precisely-spoilery references to "The Curse of Fenric", and mentions of alcoholism.
> 
> I'm working under the non-New Adventures presumption that Ace actually did leave the Doctor to attend the Prydon Academy on Gallifrey.

Late in her life, she could pinpoint it exactly: she was three years old, but the memory remained as fresh as yesterday. The pilot went out on their battered gas cooker, and her mum forgot to open the windows and put on the fan before she relit it. It was only a brief flash, singeing some of the fruit on the bench. Dorothy was so fascinated by the way the apples’ skin blistered in that instant that she forgot to cry.

It was the row that came after—the way her dad shouted about irresponsibility and broke Mum’s bottle against the wall—that burnt her. Then he slammed out of the house without his jacket, and even though Dorothy waited long after dark, he never came back.

**

If they could burn Manisha out, light her up like a candle and wait until she shriveled like a moth, someone could do the same to them, right? 

Dorothy waited for them to slip up, to try it again and get caught. She waited for the police to hunt them down. But the police scratched their heads and threw up their hands, and the skinheads were quiet. Her room was full of lighter fluid and bottles hidden away when her mother emptied them. 

The day the police closed the case unsolved, Manisha’s mum and dad loaded their two young sons into a van and bought tickets for Delhi. Dorothy lingered on the corner of their street, scuffing her toes into the weeds that broke through the sidewalk, and didn’t look up until the growl of the engine had long since faded. Then she took her bottles and cans and followed the fiery ghosts to an abandoned house at the edge of Perivale. She meant to throw one, just to see if she could catch the scattering of fallen leaves in the old garden. But then all her bottles were gone and only dregs swirled in the fuel can, and the flames leaped just below where her feet dangled from the top of the wall, and she thought she might be crying.

“Ace,” she whispered bitterly at the burning mansion. Then she slipped from the wall and ran, fading sirens chasing her all the way home.

**

He was right; she did fail her chemistry exams. It wasn’t for a lack of knowledge, but a lack of giving a damn. Because it was all chemistry really, her hobby. And it became even more interesting once she left Perivale behind. The components were much easier to come by, and she no longer had to distill her own nitroglycerin. 

It was no longer just about the flash and the boom. It was the reactions, the shift from inert to volatile when she introduced the catalyst. It was balance. It was the way the Professor could be relied upon to scold her when she blew something up, but always with a wink. It was _fun_. Except when it…wasn’t. 

She discarded the cinder-grey dress on her bathroom floor as she scrubbed the salt crust of Maiden’s Bay from her skin. It lay there, a soggy pile, until long after tea and soup and the tremendous row in the library. She finally picked it up with rage behind her eyes, and was halfway to the incinerator when she stopped dead in the hallway, staring at the sea-sticky linen. When she looked up, she found the laundry just at her left.

There were some things fire couldn’t sear away.

**

When the Doctor left her on Gallifrey to smolder in the face of constant derision, Ace was pleased to find herself an expert in at least one thing. She carried that with her, beneath her novice’s robes, just as she had once carried canisters in her rucksack. It was a starting point. It was her ticket into the engineering track. Eventually, it was a place to stand with her head high and the taunts about her species ashes at her feet.

She never thought it would also be an ending.

**

She was hanging there, hanging on the edge, her ship drifting and powerless, when the explosion finally came. It was much less dramatic than she expected, after a lifetime measured in fire, just enough to knock the planet out of its orbit. Since time was collapsing anyway, it seemed to see no point in lingering; what should have taken millions of years passed in only a moment. It simply slipped into the gravity well of the Eye and spun gracefully down. There was a flash, and then a stark, brief moment of darkest dark. 

And that was all.


End file.
